1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a magnetic tape take-up system for winding a magnetic tape around a reel in a cassette casing.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a magnetic tape take-up system, a cassette casing (in which a pair of reels and a leader tape connected to the reels at its opposite ends are housed) is transferred to a winding position, and a magnetic tape is wound around one of the reels in the winding position. Thereafter the cassette casing is removed from the winding position. See, for instance, U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,690.
In magnetic tape cassettes such as an 8 mm video cassette, one of a plurality of kinds of magnetic tapes which differ in the length, the material of the magnetic layer and/or the method of forming the magnetic layer is wound around the reel. Accordingly, tape identifying holes arranged in a predetermined pattern are formed on the casing so that the kind of the magnetic tape in the cassette can be automatically detected when the cassette is loaded in a cassette tape recorder.
When winding a magnetic tape in a cassette casing providing with such tape identifying holes, cassette casings having thereon the tape identifying holes arranged in a pattern which represents the kind of the tape to be wound must be fed to the winding position. However, conventionally the cassette casing are fed manually by an operator and the pattern of the tape identifying holes is visually checked by the operator, which can result in feeding of a wrong cassette casing and mismatch of the casing and the magnetic tape. Conventionally such a mismatch of the casing and the magnetic tape cannot be recognized until the inspection step after the winding step.
Thus, in the conventional magnetic tape take-up system, the fact that a wrong cassette casing has been fed is recognized after the tape winding step, which results in waste of material and manhour.
Though the problem may be overcome by forming the tape identifying holes in the cassette casing after the tape winding step, it involves a problem that the cassette casing must be so structured that cuttings formed by punching the tape identifying holes do not disperse in the cassette casing, which results in increase in the manufacturing cost as disclosed, for instance, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 60(1985)-182080.